Historically High - Patreon Episode: Pot Quiz Vol 2 Salty or Sweet

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Books close, pull out your Pens and Papers. Time to find out if you know your sweets, or if you're just a salty little bitch. Snacks....we're talking about the origins of some of history's greatest snacks. Subscribe to Patreon.com/historicallyhigh to support the show and get weekly bonus content like this and other things. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We are back. I hope you're enjoying the new theme music. It's growing on me quite a bit. I'm enjoying it too. We have a little Spin the Choice type pot quiz today because I got two for you to choose from. Oh, okay.

So, for pot quizzes, would you rather do sweets and salties or generally known? I'm very curious what the sweet and salty thing is. And I'm scared of the generally known. because if I don't know it, that makes me feel better before an episode. They're very literal.

Sweet and salty. Okay. So sweets and salties. This is going to be all about snack foods. Sweet and salty snack foods. Just in the future when we do this, generally known is generally known generals. So famous generals that we have covered on this podcast.

Oh, it's a play on words. Shit. Hold on. Either way. Let's still go with sweet. Okay. They're both a lot of fun. All right. So sweets and salties. Just a little reminder pot quiz.

We have five questions. These are five things. And I'm going to, it's almost a little like Jeopardy. Also. Except when I'm stupid, you have to give me three hints, right? A hint? No, no. Everything has four hints.

Okay. I don't want to rip off anybody's catchphrases, but I had a dream. And I don't know how we're going to pull off this dream. but I had a dream that we were able to set up a historically high fan jeopardy where we went through and made a full jeopardy board of questions from all the episodes because we've done enough episodes to where we could do five categories and be able to pull something from five different episodes for the questions then we figure out historical douchebags yeah exactly events that made you say oh shit

And then we got to figure out how to find the people that have watched or listened to all the episodes and see how they would do. I think fan jeopardy would be so much fun. I would love that. You're going to have to outsource that. That's the thing. I have no idea. Technologically, you and I aren't on that level. But I would like to say that one of these days we will be able to make that happen because doing a Jeopardy border would be a lot of fun of past episodes.

I was going to say if we had like the video component, everything, it would be fun. to do, be able to do a call in. Yeah. And basically do a calling with someone or like a couple people doing... Three people. Everybody has a distinct buzzer. That way you could go back and listen to the episode. Yeah.

And try to find the answer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to get it figured out. Or just look up the... It would have to be non-historical stuff during the episode, though, because all it is is them looking up and saying like, well, what episode did they do it on? You just look up the fact and get the answer. We'd have to make it to where it was something specific that we set. I'm thinking like serial killers.

Like how many times did Chris interrupt Adam in this episode? If we did like a serial killer, like I killed all of my victims via strangulation. Who is Gary Ridgeway? Something like that. All right. So back to the pod quiz, sweets and salties. Question number one. The Hydrox launched in 1908, but my copycat appearance and better marketing scheme ended up winning

the cookie war. I know this one. Already? Oreo. Ding, ding, ding. Got it on the first one. Why did I? How?

I somehow knew that because it was either a show or something like that they had Oreos, but they made a joke like, oh, you guys have any Oreos? And he's like, we got Hydroxes. And he's like, what the fuck is that?

And he went and showed him, he's like, oh. Yeah, it's just an Oreo. Hydrox came out four years before. Oreos. Not to shit on Oreos, but do you know how fucking bad those are for you? Have you seen the Oreo to blowtor or the blow torch to the Oreo thing? It doesn't burn.

It doesn't degrade or anything. Well, and that's the interesting part was because Hydrox is a mix of hydrogen and oxygen. This is why they called them that. But because it sounded like a chemical cleaning agent, people thought that Oreos just sounded more tasty, which I can't blame them. Was it hard for the marketing department to be like, You guys have to beat Hydrox. Yeah.

So 1912 is when Oreo launches. They've launched in 85 different flavors. They also hitched a ride to space on the 1985 Atlanta space shuttle mission. Very interesting. Also, we got a little subway issue here because the double stuff version is actually only about 1.86 times the filling and not double. Fucking liars. So we got a subway foot long that's 11 inches again. Bullshit.

not the worst thing Subway's ever done. Like these companies don't think people are petty enough to be like, I'm gonna, and someone it wasn't just someone scraping off, like one thing of cream and being like, this is way less. You had to go through, like, enough of that to get an average to be able to prove your case. Like a whole entire package of them. You just have like a graph that's like on average, if you look at the line here, this is how much stuff they actually had. All right.

Number two, I'm very excited about this one because this first clue, I don't know if it's going to make or break it. I was invented at Disneyland in the early 1960s by frying and seasoning leftover tortillas. Yeah, tortilla chips. Doritos, I think. Wow. Sweet and salty. You're kicking some ass, buddy. For some reason, also, this shit pops up on my Instagram feed pretty often. I saw something about that like three days ago, no joke. And I was like, oh, yeah.

I thought I was the food history guy. Wow. So over the lifetime of Doritos, they've made over a hundred unique flavors that they've produced worldwide. A hundred flavors of Doritos. That's nuts. I'm trying to know. How many do you think you've tried? The Korean chicken wing ones are, they're fucking incredible.

Would you say under a dozen? Yeah. Yeah, because what there's, I think there's the green salsa verde ones now. There's the sweet chili ones. Cool Ranch. It's the best. top five stoner foods of all time. Nacho cheese, the old crappy taco season ones.

There's a spicy nacho cheese now. Okay. And I feel like there has to be a jalapeno one. Interestingly enough, so 66, just regular toasted corn, 67 taco flavors introduced, 72 nacho cheese. We got to wait all the way until 1984 for Cool Ranch. I forgot about the taco flavored ones. Why aren't those more popular? They don't season them a whole time.

Really? They're pretty heavily corn still. Like, think of how you feel. Like, the nach cheese ones are different because, I mean, there's a pretty decent, consistent consistency of the dustings. When you get a ranch one, I mean, you know when you got that ranch one that just is completely covered. And then the real dirt bag move is using those for chips and salsa. Oh.

Oh, boy. See, what I do, this is going to be extremely weird, is also. save those ones that are completely covered. And if I get to one that doesn't have a lot, I break off a piece of that one and I eat it with the other one so I can maintain the cool ranch consistency of the flavor. That's interesting. That's a move.

I like that. I'm cutting it with some, yeah. It's like when you're looking at a slice of pizza and there's only two left, but you don't want to take the bigger one to be an asshole, but the other smaller one has less pepperoni. So you just grab a couple and swap them over real quick. All right.

three. Where are we at? Okay. I was invented in 1861 by Boston Confectioner William Schraft. This is the first one we're going to get by the first clue, but I don't know. Okay, hold on. It's a confection? A Boston confectioner named William Schraft. I think I know where it is, but let's keep going. Hint number two. I was marketed as a comfort food for Union soldiers during the Civil War. infection. Would you call it a confection nowadays? Yeah. Okay.

Absolutely. Just in the way that it's made. I still have the same idea in my head. I blew up in the 1930s as an Easter treat because of my egg-like shape. Is it a Cadbury cream egg? Oh, is that final? Okay, last one. Well, hold on, hold on. Okay, yeah, keep going. I need this last one. This might help, it might not.

my headquarters resides in Fairfield, California, right next to San Francisco. I mean, egg shape. From Boston. No, I got you. Is there a nickname for Boston that's egg shaped? I don't know a lot about Boston. Bean Town. Is it jelly bean, jelly bellies or jelly beans?

Ding, ding, ding. Jelly beans. So Jelly Bellies is the primary jelly bean company now. Yeah. Who's in San Francisco. Boston Confectioner making jelly beans. It makes total sense. Maybe I don't have a solid understanding.

I thought confectioner was just just like pastries and stuff like that. It's basically like a candy maker, but the thing that kind of what jelly beans were modeled after was Turkish Delight, where it's kind of that jelly fill bite. And then they actually run them through spinners to put that harder coating on the outside of them. So it's basically like a multi-textural... You've watched a documentary on this, haven't you? I just like jelly beans. I like jelly beans a lot. Okay.

Butter popcorn jelly beans are awesome. Dr. Pepper Popper... Or Dr. Pepper Jelly Beans are the fucking shit. I don't know why. They're just beautiful... What a time to be alive. The lights. Yeah, I want to say there was like three different flavors when they first came out.

Not a lot, but crazy that it dates back to the fact that the Civil War Union soldiers had jelly beans. they're looking it's like jellybilly on the actual they're like oh yes my dearest gertrude thank you for the care package of jellybellies yeah dude you're just looking through a civil war letter written back home

you're trying to go over and pat the dead soldier the union soldier because he's like what are you looking for the last guy guy's got his pack he had these like little bean things the confederate guy's like what did you pull out of that guy's pockets uh he had some bullets and these magic looking beans?

Are these guys growing beanstalks? The fuck they did. They're delicious. Try them, yeah, eat them. All right, number four. I was invented in 1941 by Forrest Mars Senior. I was designed

for a special purpose in mind with portability and heat resistance. I gained my iconic Black M in 1950 to ensure consumers were getting the original authentic product. It's Eminem's.

Ding, ding, ding. Because I think that that was something that was provided to soldiers in their rations. Was it World War II rations? Was it that early? During World War II, M&Ms were exclusively sold to the military. That was their only buyer. I know they had shot the bars and everything like that, too. Yeah, the Hershey bars just.

Do you know what's crazy? Like, I know, and it goes back to, like, the Red Bull Express episode, how, like, the guys furthest away got the shitty. Have you always assumed that, like, it was consistent throughout the military of, like, what all soldiers had? Because they were getting them all the same stuff. I would bet during the Red Ball Express era, not a lot of M&Ms made it to the front. That's what I'm saying. They were ripping up in MREs.

They were pulling out. They were like, what the fuck are these little chocolate things everyone's eating? Those were in your rations. I got half my rations. They drank my juice, and apparently they ate my M&Ms. I've been eating half the German. rations, which are better. All right, number five.

So pretty good. Three for four. Three for four, and you got the first two on the first clues. Number five might be a little tough. Okay. I was invented in 1968 to solve the problem of broken and greasy potato chips. Number two, I have been produced in over 200 flavors worldwide throughout my history. Pringles.

God damn, you're good. three or four for five i'm racking my brain i'm like how the fuck do you protect potato chips yeah apparently some guy named jean wolf that was a science fiction author uh was the mechanical engineer that built the cooking machine to be able to create that yeah and they used a supercomputer to create this hyperbolic paraboloid shape that they're in to make them sit on each other and not have like a wiggle effect. That's so cool that there was an entire science behind that to say extreme stackability. Yeah.

What's the shape that could potentially take up, not look like it's taken up a ton of space, but actually take up some space. Because you get a- And they're fun. Yeah, you get a full can of Pringles. That's a lot of chips. Yeah. It's a whole lot of chips.

But is it? Doesn't feel like it. It also doesn't help that they're only 40% potato. flour and the rest of it is different kinds of flowers that kind of make them light and airy. So you're not getting a full potato potato chip. At the same time, it's innovative. You're going for the flavor or the saltings, yeah. And I mean, again, sour cream and onion.

Pretty undefeated. Isn't it crazy how no one can nail cool ranch the right, like the same way? Yeah. You would think with them, that being so popular, other places would be like, of course we're going to get their ranch formula and test it. No one ever gets it. Like ranch, and maybe it's the taste of the chip, a potato chip versus a tortilla chip. I will say, yes, that's a lot of it. Okay.

You're going that way. But Trader Joe's, the old faithful, has come out with the tocky's knockoff that's cool ranch, so they're the rolled corn chips. Okay. And they have a ranch flavor pretty close and pretty good. Are talkies the one that are little wichats? The rolled up potato chips. So they're like the, they're potato chips, but they're just basically, it looks like a scroll. Okay.

I don't think I've had those. They're crunchy. They're awesome. And the ranch, it's not the same cool ranch. It'll never be Doritos cool ranch, but it's pretty good. It leaves enough on your fingers afterwards, do you have to look at the napkin and look at your fingers and think, do I need to waste a napkin on this? I either go for Pringles. It's either original, weirdly enough, or cheddar.

I don't know if I've ever had the cheddar. It's going to be some exploring time They do a good cheddar Yeah I'm going to have to be fun in this at the store All right so 90% Ding ding ding Or 80% pretty damn good Four out of five not too bad

Yeah I think we're That was fun I'm actually now very much looking Much looking forward to general knowledge All right All right everyone Hope you enjoyed it We'll catch on the next one

Peace